Ian Callum, CBE, Designer
Ian Callum penned the Aston Martin DB7 and headed Jaguar design for 20 years but it was a spell behind the wheel of a Ferrari 250 GT SWB in his native Scotland that will always be his favourite Detour.
“This is a big part of the bucket list. No this is the bucket list.”
“Andrew Frankel from Motorsport magazine phoned me up for an interview and one of the questions was ‘You’ve got one car, one road and a full tank of fuel, what’s it going to be?’. I didn’t think for very long because my favourite car of all time is the Ferrari 250 GT Short Wheelbase. It’s just perfect.
I said that I’d go up the West Coast of Scotland because I used to go there for my holidays as a kid and I used to drive an old Transit around a local car park when I was 14 with some of the boys I met up there. I promised myself that I’d come back in a special car and drive those roads for myself in one of these boyhood dreams. As it happened, it came true.
About two or three weeks after the article came out Clive Beecham called me and said ‘I believe you’d like to drive a 250.’
I drove up to Inverness airport, and he flew up and the car was transported in a closed transporter. It rolled out and it was the Rob Walker number seven car. And I looked at Clive said ‘Bloody hell you didn’t tell me it was this one!’
I'll never forget the car was like brand new and obviously waxed up. Raindrops were dropping on the rear haunches. And I wish I'd taken a picture of it. I'll never forget it, it's just embedded in my mind the rain dropping on that car just dripping down the side to the wheel was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
Off we went, it was quite cold, damp, a bit skittish and Clive drove to start with. We went towards Dingwall and he said ‘ Do you want a shot?’
I was quite nervous, I really didn’t know if I wanted to drive or not. I knew it was worth a lot of money. You know when you drive an old car you start very sheepishly because you have no idea what it’s going to be like. With a modern car you know the brakes will stop you and it’ll go around a corner, but with an old car you never know so I was very wary. Well, the clutch was a bit heavy, but it was okay and then the wheels spun! After I’d driven it about five miles and was relaxing into it Clive said: ‘You’ve got to rev it!’
The clouds just opened up and this blue sky came through and it remained like that for two days. There was steam coming off the road and it was just the most memorable moment.
We eventually got to Ullapool and along a road that I’d been on so many times in my life before but never driven. Oh my god did I drive that car quickly! It was beyond anything I would have normally allowed myself because the car led you to drive it in such a manner that there was no other way. That beautiful engine just had to be revved and the gearbox was so sweet.
We got to our hotel and I took some pictures of it sitting on the old streets that I remembered and thought: ‘This is a big part of the bucket list. No this is the bucket list.’”
